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2013 Java trends: The cloud floats into Java application development

Doesn't it seem like just yesterday when cloud computing
was born? In today's accelerated environment, the cloud is already entering its adolescence. Over
the next year, Java application developers can expect to experience growing pains as companies
learn even more about the importance and potential limitations of scalability. There are plenty of
hormonal mood swings on the horizon as enterprises continue their love/hate relationship with the
cloud. Java cloud computing pros can expect lots of safety issues to navigate as well. Here are
five of the trends we suspect will make 2013 a year to remember for cloud computing and Java
application development.

Enterprises will experiment more with cloud computing resources

Businesses that want to remain competitive in 2013 know they must continue to innovate with
their enterprise
software development -- especially with mobile changing the rules. This means development needs
to get faster and less expensive. Testing is one area of development where cloud scalability has
obvious implications for managing costs. But everything from collaboration to source code and issue
tracking is ripe for migration.

Mark Driver, vice president of research at Stamford, Conn.-based Gartner Inc., said the risky
business of experimentation will seem more attractive as businesses move
development activities to the cloud. "Projects can begin on a lighter budget. The people who
are funding development teams tend to be more willing to try something because they don't have to
commit six figures of resources or budget up front. They can give it a try. If it doesn't work out
in a couple of months, OK. They didn't spend that much money. If it does work, they can ramp up the
project and move forward."

Personal cloud will add to BYOD challenges

In this brave new world, Java developers don't just have to worry about the
security sieve of bring your own device (BYOD) from the perspective of what's on the device
itself or how to manage security across a range of different devices. Protecting enterprise data
and enterprise apps from other apps that have been downloaded to an employee's personal device will
also be part of the battle. The ubiquitous presence of personal clouds, which employees want to use
for both personal and work purposes, is an additional threat.

File sharing and the use of personal email accounts to send business documents is just the tip
of the iceberg. If your apps themselves are exposed to side
channels via a personal cloud (which is always a public cloud), that poses an entirely
different problem. Unless it is designed to resist decompilation efforts, a business app in the
wrong hands could provide backdoor access to your servers. While policies dictating what can and
can't be shared via the cloud are a good idea, IT will have to put network, software, and data
safeguards in place to actually prevent such actions.

Hybrid will become the new normal

Perhaps the hybrid
cloud model should be renamed the "enterprise cloud." Public cloud was dismissed early on as
incompatible with the needs of large organizations because it doesn't offer enough control. But the
rush to implement private clouds as the ideal alternative has proven that a solely internal
solution isn't really going to cut it either. In fact, the
private cloud has been compared to little more than souped-up virtualization. It makes more
efficient use of resources, but it still means a substantial up-front investment and requires the
organization to make guesses about future capacity requirements.

Sadly, enterprises are going to have to do the hard work of creating the blended solutions that
will capture the flexibility and cost savings of public cloud while keeping some processes inside
the more protected private cloud. This is likely to include deploying less-sensitive applications
in the public cloud and bursting certain activities as needed. We can expect to see more big
businesses finally "growing up" about the fact that the cloud will never be a simple solution --
but are embracing it as a rewarding one, nonetheless. On that note, cloud aggregators
who can do the heavy lifting of putting together hybrid cloud packages and delivering them via a
single interface for IT to manage will probably have a boom year.

Burgeoning user population will test the cloud to its limits

Mobile and cloud seem born for each other. After all, they both offer the promise of being able
to access applications, data and computing power anywhere at any time. But problems arise when
every single mobile device user in the world wants to play the latest downloadable game at the same
damn time. Jim Farrell, a product marketing professional at Joyent, believes that businesses are
going to have to take a hard look at the platform they are using if they want to be able to scale
cost effectively in the cloud.

"Free or very cheap mobile devices are now available in India and other places in Asia. The
number of mobile users, Internet connections and concurrent
connections are all changing dramatically right now," Farrell said. "Enterprises are used to
being able to predict stuff. Now, they're going to have a hard time. They need to embrace not only
cloud, but open source technologies that allow them to scale differently."

Farrell pointed to Node.js as a
platform that can accelerate mobile by ensuring cloud memory and CPU usage is as efficient as
possible. With big players like Wal-Mart and LinkedIn already on board the Node train, it's likely
other enterprises will take an interest in clouds that can perform well when traffic spikes to
previously unimagined levels.

Businesses will tighten cloud spending

Like a college student with their first credit card, IT has gone hog-wild with spending in the
cloud in some organizations. Then Dad (the CFO) got a look at the bill and freaked out. Consumption-based
spending doesn't save money if you consume to excess. After experiencing a brief honeymoon
period of apparent cost savings, enterprises are getting around to taking a closer look at
month-to-month spending.

2013 is likely to be the year when businesses throttle back and stop gorging on cloud services.
Instead, they will demand more accountability internally for how services
are consumed. IT will be leveraging all the tools at its disposal, including detailed
monitoring and automated provisioning/de-provisioning to spend its budget more strategically in the
cloud.

What do you think of these trends in Java and cloud computing? What will be the most
important area to watch in 2013 and beyond? Let
us know.

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